This forum software requires a plugin to handle animated gifs. Actually, it handles all images if you install it.

That plugin was the one that was degrading image quality within the posts unless you clicked on it and brought it up in separately in the browser.

If we turn it back on, it does odd things to every image posted. Which is a tad counter productive on an art site that you actually want detail and it to look the same as intended. So you can see renders as they were meant to seen, not loose detail on things like shader setups and numbers, etc. Well, so it looks like you wanted it too.

So that sort of left us with a choice. add animated gif support and degrade the rest, or remotely host animated gifs.

There is another way to set it up as well, but that way converts all images to png for internal storage on the server, and they don't animate either.

You can remotely host the animated gifs, and it will work fine thou.
This is a random one I picked just as an example.